Introduction

Ifemidayo LayGiri

I had said in this post about link building Vs. link acquisition that I would be addressing the general topic around Quality Vs. Quantity as is related to link building and social media marketing. Well, I finally found my angle and I think it’s time to proceed with my case in front of my jury (you guys).

Before we begin, yes quality is very important and yes it is also quite pleasing to have large numbers — atimes though, some “marketers” and business owners get it all twisted and do everything backwards.

Quality in Social Media Vs. Quantity

If you had to choose, 1000 USD real money in your pockets that you can spend anytime you want and 1 million USD fake currency that you may or may not be able to spend (most likely won’t), which would you pick?

My point is — having 200,000 twitter followers and Facebook likes is great — Great if those fans are interested in your product and they engage with you. On the other hand, it is quite useless if these fans are fake or bots. In the times of now your fake fans do not deceive anyone… No one except yourself that is.

So if we are following my initial logic, it pays a lot more to have 1000 real fans who will engage with your brand and maybe even buy whatever it is that you are selling than having 1 million faceless nobodies who do not give a care in the world.

I could bore you with the — your business is online to make money and sell a product or service so what use are fake fans going to do argument– but I doubt you need me to explain it any further. The logic as above is very sound.

Quality in SEO Vs. Quantity

This one may not function exactly like its social media counterpart — here is why:

In search engine optimization, Quality matters a lot.. but so does quantity. If you ever heard the saying no one link will make all the difference for your website — Well it’s through, because you have one link from Wikipedia, your website doesn’t suddenly become a leader in search for keywords around your niche. It doesn’t work that way.

If you have a way to acquire quality links in a continuous progression over time till they become quantity then please do exactly that… But do not buy links from link farms and places like Fiverr in the name of quantity, you would be mistaking. If you would like to read on the pitfalls of buying links and why you shouldn’t do it please read this blog post…

So, how do you go about quantity without compromising on quality? Very easy — Always go after quality — and before you know it you have quality in quantity… (That wordplay did not happen on purpose. I PROMISE)

Comparing Results

It wouldn’t make much sense if I am simply dolling out advice without having practiced what I am preaching so I will give you real life examples of how everything I have said up there applies.

If you were trying to grow a Facebook page for example, get likes and fans and what not. You set aside 2000 USD for this project, you do your research and then you begin to spend. Let me tell you what will happen when you exhaust your 2000 dollar budget:

You are going to continue to see engagement with your brand either as in clicks to your website, purchases or maybe just likes and re-shares.

Your Facebook page will continue to grow organically, you will continue to receive likes for months and months un-end.

Your investment will somehow eventually give you a return on investment – maybe not immediately but – eventually.

Now think about how that will go if you simply spent 2000 USD buying 500,000 fake fans…. Anyone?

You get no clicks, no engagement and definitely no return on your investment — then here is the part that will really hurt your feelings — At some point in the future Facebook WILL hammer down on fake/spam accounts and a lot of your likes/fans WILL disappear. So not only have you wasted that money… You have literally got nothing to show for it.

Now you might want to argue, 2000 USD will not get me 500,000 likes with Facebook advertising but pay attention to my counter argument here…

2000 USD may not get you "500,000 fake likes" but it will get you a healthy 20,000 likes that will continue to increase, engage and purchase your product or service...

If you are still not convinced then you will not find help here… Any questions on this topic can be dropped in the comments section below and I will respond ASAP.